Day 76 - Bye bye Turkey! - A great friendly country for cycle touring.

I'm catching the midnight passenger ferry (30 euros - bike free) to Girne (Kyrenia) tonight. I have 4 days left to tour Cyprus before I have to be in Larnaca and start preparing the bike for it's trip back to Portugal.........courtesy of Easyjet.

I'm going to head out to the eastern-most tip of Cyprus (the 'panhandle') along the north coast and then back to Larnaca along the southern coast via Famagusta and Ayia Napa. My outbound route. My inbound route

........or follow my route on the satellite tracker

Replacing the calories in Tasucu........ferry ticket to hand. Amusingly, the waiter sticks a vase of plastic flowers on the table......to enhance the beauty of my photo.

Using public transport, be it train, boat, plane, with a fully laden bike, always has an edginess to it........you never quite know what to expect. I've dealt with rail platform underpasses and got my bike jammed in an airport oversize baggage scanner but a ferry was a first.

The passenger ferry is due to sail at midnight. I arrived at the ferry office in town at the appointed hour of 10pm. There are school minibuses outside the office that seem to be picking up passengers. The buses pull out as I arrive. The clerk sees me and dashes out into the street to wave down the last bus. I'm thinking there is no way my bike is going to fit on that bus. I receive my instructions "Follow that bus to the port, it's only 2km". Quite exciting really, choking on the diesel fumes and avoiding the potholes while trying to keep up.

At the port a security gate is raised to admit the bus. I sense trouble. As I try and sneak through as close behind the bus as possible a security guard stops me. In Turkish he explains "Wrong ferry, this is a passenger ferry, you need the vehicle ferry". Several minutes pass while various people discuss my fate. I'm OK, I'm on the right ferry. As I said, there's always an edginess.
At 'check-in' I have to strip all the luggage off the bike to be scanned but the bike is walked through.

The ferry was an ancient rust bucket, dirty and smelly , not at all what I was expecting. So very little sleep overnight and a painful back in the morning.

Follow that bus!

Waiting for the ferry